been a pillar of fire coming to earth to claim its own, an immense arc of fire and smoke was ejected out of the ground. After it there came silence, broken here and there by the rattle of the _débris_ upon the roofs of the houses, and by the shouts and shrieks of a town in the confusion of a panic. That night those who slept had dreams of the day of judgment, while those who lay awake were restless, quaking with an insidious terror. In the morning the cause explained itself, since barely half a mile up the line was an enormous rent in the ground, the line itself being strewn and scattered with the rubbish of an earthquake. The Boers, with much ingenuous enterprise, had despatched upon a purely friendly mission a trolly load of dynamite; unfortunately, where they had started their infernal machine the declivity of the line had precipitated the truck backwards toward their own camp, and having very foolishly lighted their time-fuse before they had surmounted the crest of the rise, they had not the courage to stop the progress of the somewhat novel engine of destruction. Apparently it had rolled slowly downwards, tracking the instigators of such a deed with very fatal persistence, until the time-fuse met the charge, and powder and dynamite went off together. Upon the morrow there was much sadness in the Boer camp, and much silence. Dynamite has played a not unimportant _rôle_ in the history of our siege. Cronje has heard from native spies, and from his friends in our camp, that Mafeking is set within a circle of dynamite mines, and he has protested against its use in civilised warfare. Since then, however, he has not only discharged dynamite by trolly loads into the town, but he has threatened, in his vague and shadowy fashion, to send to his capital for some dynamite guns. It would seem, then, that a warm time is coming to Mafeking; the pity of it being that we are kept so long and in such unnecessary suspense. If Cronje were the gallant warrior whose dignity he assumes in addressing the garrison, he would have either taken or abandoned Mafeking some weeks ago. As it is, however, with occasional letters of regret for such untimely procedure, he still elects to bombard an inoffensive and unoffending township. The other morning, after the usual series of dull days, the activity in the Boer camp suggested to us that the town was about to be attacked. From the south-west the big Creusot opened fire at intervals of twenty minutes, the intervening periods being pleasantly filled in with Mauser and Martini fire and shells from two nine-pound high-velocity Krupps. In a very short space of time the list of fatalities included a native dog, a commissariat mule, and many buildings. After such a bloodless bombardment the Boer legions gallantly rode round to the east with the apparent intention of attacking the town. Then we thought that, in that moment, our defence would be justified, but he is wisest who determines what is to be the